Actually, making money even in the everyone pirates model is straightforward. You move to a 100% product placement advertising model, and/or run advertisements using overlays on the content.
There's no particular reason to believe you can't make shows and movies just as expensive this way.
the vast majority of the international community in the western world does agree on some basic legal principles:
I think you're thinking of some small cartels, not the vast majority of the international community in the western world.
That those cartels have had the financial resources to pass laws controlling the actions of the vast majority is just a reflection of the poor design of our western governmental systems.
Well, dipshit is poorly defined, according to ask.com: dipshit (dp'sht') pronunciation Vulgar Slang. n.
A foolish or contemptible person.
I'd assume the grandparent was going with the 'contemptible' definition (which is actually the definition I would have thought of as my best guess). A person can be reasonably smart, competent, able to create code exploits, and a jerk. In fact, to do so obviously requires that you be a jerk.
I'm guessing that the choice of 4x4 was surely because of the 'cool' factor of that particular number pair (connecting with the automotive world for marketing purposes). And in fairness to them, calling a system with 4 cpu cores combined with the power of 4 gpu cores a 4x4 system isn't even misleading in my view. You really are getting 4 of each. Heck, with the automotive equivalent, you aren't even getting 4 of 2 things, you're really just getting 4 wheels powered independently by one engine. In AMD's equivalent, it's almost like getting 4 wheels powered by 4 engines.
Hmm, I wonder how male janitors clean women's bathrooms.
Hint: just entering a women's restroom or showers isn't breaking a law. But if you see something you weren't supposed to, and the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy, then you're in serious trouble.
There's a 2 step issue here. First, it's the DVD player who has to comply with the UAP restrictions. They are allowed (by necessity) to have bypasses during development, which must be turned off in released players. They can often be re-enabled by the end user, and this may or may not constitute a contract violation, I haven't seen the contracts. But that has no effect on the legality for me, the end user to use such a feature, I haven't agreed to the contract.
It's 2 processor slots on the motherboard. What's interesting about the announcement is that apparently AMD is sneaking dual-processor capable athlons (not opterons) out the door.
Public key cryptography does not work against a man in the middle attack. When the files are being encrypted by software running on your computer, such a virus is inevitably vulnerable. To overcome this flaw, the virus writer would have to send the files to a pre-known IP address for off-site encryption (which among other problems would probably be a pretty noticeable activity). Doing so would presumably also expose the author to risk that the computer in question (and presumably he himself) could be siezed.
I think minors goes up to 17 (in most states) but LA could be different. Still, I think most 13+ year olds are frequently allowed by parents to spend time alone with their friends in the mall. Getting $50 for a game isn't very hard if you have an allowance or a job (tutoring, lawn mowing, paperboy, etc). A lot of kids have access to considerably more money than that. Buy the game, ditch the box and cd-case, carry the game disk home in your pants. So I would say that even being a reasonably cautious parent, there is a pretty reasonable chance that your child could buy a game without your knowing.
Whether or not they could manage to play it without your knowing would be another matter, but unless you have them under pretty sever lockdown they can probably play it at a friend's house without your finding out. Kids are smart. As smart or smarter than you were at that age. My parents were both Masters+ educated, and did their utmost to completely lockdown my experience. They were stricter than anyone else's parents I have ever met (now at age 33), and still I had plenty of ways around their monitoring.
Parents shouldn't believe that they can control their children's experiences. They can't. There's not a shred of hope (consider: the best trained experts in experience control, jail wardens, can't keep drugs out of any prison in the world). What parents can do is influence their children, educate them, help to reduce their interest in whatever they want their kids not to get involved in.
Well, in fairness to Jack, he got laws passed to do just that, but they were overturned on free speech grounds. Now he's modelling his legislation on the laws that restrict the sale of pornography to minors, hoping that by that route he will succeed where his other legislative efforts failed.
Its beyond me why people are willing to more intensely legislate against games than any other entertainment medium.
The reason is straightforward, actually. There are only 2 other serious (widespread) forms of entertainment: audio (RIAA) and video (MPAA). And the reason games get attacked is that there isn't (yet) a GAA. The RIAA and the MPAA have a lot of powerful lawyers on retainer ready to defend themselves against any such attack. Jack Thompson would have no chance against them (and more powerful organizations than Jack Thompson have tried). Bottom line: games are the most defenseless target.
Technically, putting all parents in jail and raising the children in state run orphanages would help prevent your child from playing something falling into 1 or 2.
I mean, as long as you're willing to go along with anything that will help prevent it.
This law would make it illegal for the store to sell him a game simulating a cockfight, it would remain perfectly legal for him to play such a game (if, for example a parent bought it for him).
However, in neither case could he legally go to a cockfight, as they are illegal throughout the US, for both attendees (slap on the wrist.. probably a small fine) and organizers (jail time).
The US has a frequently used rating system, the ESRB system. However, getting a rating is volutary (to the extent that it is up to you, but if you're not rated, you'll lose 90% of your sales because walmart won't carry unrated titles). But on the sales side, there is no enforcement legislation (which actually was Thompson's previous strategy, but which was overturned in the courts). Basically, due to free speech and commerce requirements in the US constitution, it's very difficult to restrict what retailers are allowed to sell, and so none of the major retailers enforces any rules about selling mature rated titles to minors.
There aren't any current laws in Louisiana / the U.S. due to first amendment issues. Such laws have been passed in several states, but all have been struck down as unconstitutional. It is fully expected that even if this law is passed, it will be immediately struck down in court.
The ESRB rating system is just that, a rating system. It describes the content of the games it is applied to, but has no legal or actual bearing on who a given store can or will sell the game to (none of the 3 largest retail game sales stores restricts purchase of any game regardless of rating).
For clarification purposes (follow up to my other post), here is the text of interest from the bill (with emphasis added by me for the key point):
91.14. Prohibited sales of video or computer games to minors 9 A. An interactive video or computer game shall not be sold, leased, or rented 10 to a minor if the trier of fact determines all of the following: 11 (1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would 12 find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's 13 morbid interest in violence. 14 (2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing 15 standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors. 16 (3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or 17 scientific value for minors.
Enforcing a rating system in the US is very hard due to issues with our first amendment rights to free speech. And the person in question actually has worked to try to write rating system enforcement legislation, and has had no luck there (gets overturned in our courts every time due to aforementioned first amendment issues).
What we need is a voluntary agreement by the 3 major retailers of games to abide by the ratings system voluntarily, but no one wants to be the first mover on that issue because of the sales loss they'll take. The only thing that will change this, frankly, is if enough parents get up in arms about this to coordinate a serious boycott of walmart to force them to make the first move on enforcement.
There have been plenty of scientific papers published about all 3 of those games, so I think they'd pass the scientific merit test.
And to be clear, the bill ands the 3 conditions, not ors them. So in addition to lacking scientific or artistic merit, it must also have violence beyond community standards, and that part would be pretty hard to argue for any of those 3 games.
I think once Jack gets done with this he should go after Britney Spears because of implied sex in her songs.;P
You think he wouldn't like to? The problem is that the RIAA is well organized and has a lot of money to spend on lawyers. The game industry doesn't have a representative body with comparable resources, so they make an easier target.
There are many places on the web that document the players that provide the skipping feature, and they've been discussed on slashdot in the past. I suspect many US slashdotters own such players precisely because they did research and bought such players for their convenience.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, making money even in the everyone pirates model is straightforward. You move to a 100% product placement advertising model, and/or run advertisements using overlays on the content.
There's no particular reason to believe you can't make shows and movies just as expensive this way.
the vast majority of the international community in the western world does agree on some basic legal principles:
I think you're thinking of some small cartels, not the vast majority of the international community in the western world.
That those cartels have had the financial resources to pass laws controlling the actions of the vast majority is just a reflection of the poor design of our western governmental systems.
God damn it, do you mean that fucking for virginity doesn't work either?
Actually, I am pleased to inform you that fucking is in fact how all virgins throughout all of history were produced. Stay the course!
dipshit and creative...isn't that an oxymoron?
Well, dipshit is poorly defined, according to ask.com:
dipshit (dp'sht') pronunciation Vulgar Slang.
n.
A foolish or contemptible person.
I'd assume the grandparent was going with the 'contemptible' definition (which is actually the definition I would have thought of as my best guess). A person can be reasonably smart, competent, able to create code exploits, and a jerk. In fact, to do so obviously requires that you be a jerk.
I'm guessing that the choice of 4x4 was surely because of the 'cool' factor of that particular number pair (connecting with the automotive world for marketing purposes). And in fairness to them, calling a system with 4 cpu cores combined with the power of 4 gpu cores a 4x4 system isn't even misleading in my view. You really are getting 4 of each. Heck, with the automotive equivalent, you aren't even getting 4 of 2 things, you're really just getting 4 wheels powered independently by one engine. In AMD's equivalent, it's almost like getting 4 wheels powered by 4 engines.
Hmm, I wonder how male janitors clean women's bathrooms.
Hint: just entering a women's restroom or showers isn't breaking a law. But if you see something you weren't supposed to, and the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy, then you're in serious trouble.
10 may be closer to the mark than you expect, as many communications devices use 2 bit per byte padding.
There's a 2 step issue here. First, it's the DVD player who has to comply with the UAP restrictions. They are allowed (by necessity) to have bypasses during development, which must be turned off in released players. They can often be re-enabled by the end user, and this may or may not constitute a contract violation, I haven't seen the contracts. But that has no effect on the legality for me, the end user to use such a feature, I haven't agreed to the contract.
It's 2 processor slots on the motherboard. What's interesting about the announcement is that apparently AMD is sneaking dual-processor capable athlons (not opterons) out the door.
I believe what they're going to be offering is dual socket motherboards that take athlon rather than opteron pinouts.
No, it's 4 cores and 4 gpus if you read their presentation slides (2xdual core procs, 2x dual gpu video boards).
Public key cryptography does not work against a man in the middle attack. When the files are being encrypted by software running on your computer, such a virus is inevitably vulnerable. To overcome this flaw, the virus writer would have to send the files to a pre-known IP address for off-site encryption (which among other problems would probably be a pretty noticeable activity). Doing so would presumably also expose the author to risk that the computer in question (and presumably he himself) could be siezed.
I think minors goes up to 17 (in most states) but LA could be different.
Still, I think most 13+ year olds are frequently allowed by parents to spend time alone with their friends in the mall. Getting $50 for a game isn't very hard if you have an allowance or a job (tutoring, lawn mowing, paperboy, etc). A lot of kids have access to considerably more money than that. Buy the game, ditch the box and cd-case, carry the game disk home in your pants.
So I would say that even being a reasonably cautious parent, there is a pretty reasonable chance that your child could buy a game without your knowing.
Whether or not they could manage to play it without your knowing would be another matter, but unless you have them under pretty sever lockdown they can probably play it at a friend's house without your finding out. Kids are smart. As smart or smarter than you were at that age. My parents were both Masters+ educated, and did their utmost to completely lockdown my experience. They were stricter than anyone else's parents I have ever met (now at age 33), and still I had plenty of ways around their monitoring.
Parents shouldn't believe that they can control their children's experiences. They can't. There's not a shred of hope (consider: the best trained experts in experience control, jail wardens, can't keep drugs out of any prison in the world). What parents can do is influence their children, educate them, help to reduce their interest in whatever they want their kids not to get involved in.
Well, in fairness to Jack, he got laws passed to do just that, but they were overturned on free speech grounds. Now he's modelling his legislation on the laws that restrict the sale of pornography to minors, hoping that by that route he will succeed where his other legislative efforts failed.
Its beyond me why people are willing to more intensely legislate against games than any other entertainment medium.
The reason is straightforward, actually. There are only 2 other serious (widespread) forms of entertainment: audio (RIAA) and video (MPAA). And the reason games get attacked is that there isn't (yet) a GAA. The RIAA and the MPAA have a lot of powerful lawyers on retainer ready to defend themselves against any such attack. Jack Thompson would have no chance against them (and more powerful organizations than Jack Thompson have tried). Bottom line: games are the most defenseless target.
Technically, putting all parents in jail and raising the children in state run orphanages would help prevent your child from playing something falling into 1 or 2.
I mean, as long as you're willing to go along with anything that will help prevent it.
This law would make it illegal for the store to sell him a game simulating a cockfight, it would remain perfectly legal for him to play such a game (if, for example a parent bought it for him).
.. probably a small fine) and organizers (jail time).
However, in neither case could he legally go to a cockfight, as they are illegal throughout the US, for both attendees (slap on the wrist
The US has a frequently used rating system, the ESRB system. However, getting a rating is volutary (to the extent that it is up to you, but if you're not rated, you'll lose 90% of your sales because walmart won't carry unrated titles). But on the sales side, there is no enforcement legislation (which actually was Thompson's previous strategy, but which was overturned in the courts). Basically, due to free speech and commerce requirements in the US constitution, it's very difficult to restrict what retailers are allowed to sell, and so none of the major retailers enforces any rules about selling mature rated titles to minors.
In Louisiana, that qualifies as scientific merit, I believe.
There aren't any current laws in Louisiana / the U.S. due to first amendment issues. Such laws have been passed in several states, but all have been struck down as unconstitutional. It is fully expected that even if this law is passed, it will be immediately struck down in court.
The ESRB rating system is just that, a rating system. It describes the content of the games it is applied to, but has no legal or actual bearing on who a given store can or will sell the game to (none of the 3 largest retail game sales stores restricts purchase of any game regardless of rating).
For clarification purposes (follow up to my other post), here is the text of interest from the bill (with emphasis added by me for the key point):
5 30.PDF
91.14. Prohibited sales of video or computer games to minors
9 A. An interactive video or computer game shall not be sold, leased, or rented
10 to a minor if the trier of fact determines all of the following :
11 (1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would
12 find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's
13 morbid interest in violence.
14 (2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing
15 standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors.
16 (3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or
17 scientific value for minors.
Here is the link if you want to verify it (pdf text of the bill from shreveport times):
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/assets/pdf/D929595
Enforcing a rating system in the US is very hard due to issues with our first amendment rights to free speech. And the person in question actually has worked to try to write rating system enforcement legislation, and has had no luck there (gets overturned in our courts every time due to aforementioned first amendment issues).
What we need is a voluntary agreement by the 3 major retailers of games to abide by the ratings system voluntarily, but no one wants to be the first mover on that issue because of the sales loss they'll take. The only thing that will change this, frankly, is if enough parents get up in arms about this to coordinate a serious boycott of walmart to force them to make the first move on enforcement.
There have been plenty of scientific papers published about all 3 of those games, so I think they'd pass the scientific merit test.
And to be clear, the bill ands the 3 conditions, not ors them. So in addition to lacking scientific or artistic merit, it must also have violence beyond community standards, and that part would be pretty hard to argue for any of those 3 games.
I think once Jack gets done with this he should go after Britney Spears because of implied sex in her songs. ;P
You think he wouldn't like to? The problem is that the RIAA is well organized and has a lot of money to spend on lawyers. The game industry doesn't have a representative body with comparable resources, so they make an easier target.
Yes, have you? Nothing in the DMCA applies in this situation, as the content skipping does not circumvent a copy protection technology.
2 0_pl105-304.html
Here's the text of the act:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_199810
There are many places on the web that document the players that provide the skipping feature, and they've been discussed on slashdot in the past. I suspect many US slashdotters own such players precisely because they did research and bought such players for their convenience.